This invention relates to apparatus for locating objects on a field from a remote location by optical sighting, and more particularly to determining the yardline position of a football on a playing field by optical measurement at a remote location.
In reporting the progress of a football game, media broadcast reporters must sometimes estimate the yardline position of the football when yardline markings are obscured because of snow, for example. The ability to accurately estimate yardline position of the football from the press box, remote from the playing field, substantially enhances live reporting of games and reduces misleading and annoyingly inaccurate reporting. Although football yardline locating apparatus are well known for determining close "first down" situations on the field, such apparatus are not suitable as an aid to live reporting of the game because of the slow measuring time involved and the remoteness of such apparatus from the reporter.
It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide apparatus for accurately estimating the position of a football on a playing field by means of apparatus at a remote spectator location.